This invention relates to reading machines that read aloud electronic representations of displayed documents.
Reading machines have been used to improve the educational attainment of individuals with learning disabilities. In general, reading machines are computer-based having specialized software that processes an input source document and generates synthetic speech. This enables the user to hear the computer read the document a word, line, sentence, etc. at a time. Often these reading machines include a scanner to provide one technique to input source documents to the reader.
The scanner provides an image file representation of a scanned document. The personal computer using optical character recognition software produces an OCR file including generated text information. The OCR file is used by the display system software to display a text-based representation of the scanned document on the monitor. The OCR file text is also used by speech synthesis software to synthesize speech. Techniques are known for applying highlighting to displayed text of a document synchronized with synthesized speech corresponding to the highlighted text.